down here at the bottom. >> reporter: today's bill, by contrast-- this one from phoenix, arizona-- has 22 line items. >> there's a charge for metering. every month they're going to charge you for the meter. there's a charge for the bill, $1.86 just for preparing your bill. there's an environmental benefit surcharge, a competition rules compliance surcharge. so we're going to have competition in the market, and you're going to pay to have competition in the market. >> reporter: competition, of course, is one of the goals of de-regulation. >> but the kinds of profits that we're seeing today, those do not reflect market competition, they reflect the defeat of competitive markets. >> reporter: dramatic case in point, says johnston: the cable television industry. you write about glasgow, kentucky, and what happened when the town tried to provide its own cable service. >> glasgow was facing very, very high prices from its monopoly cable company. just to get a handheld remote was five bucks a month. and so they decided to build their own system. well, immediately they were sued and finally it go